The BC Agriculture Council (BCAC) is committed to protecting the privacy of personal information of its customers. This Privacy Policy has been prepared to affirm BCAC’s commitment to maintaining high standards of confidentiality, to provide information on the BCAC’s practices concerning the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information, and to comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and other applicable statutes.

1. DEFINING PERSONAL INFORMATION

Personal information is any information about an “identifiable individual” that can be used to distinguish, identify or contact a specific individual. Business contact information such as information on your business card and certain publicly available information, such as names, addresses and telephone numbers as published in telephone directories are not considered personal information under federal legislation (PIPEDA). Information about corporations is not considered personal information.

Where an individual provides his or her home address to the BCAC as their business contact information, BCAC considers it to be business contact information, and is therefore not subject to protection as personal information.

2. COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We collect no personal information about you unless you choose to provide that information to us. We do not use techniques that collect personal information about anyone without their knowledge. We only collect personal information about individuals when they specifically and knowingly provide it to us; for example, when subscribing to the BCAC e-newsletter. You may also provide us with your credit card information in order to pay for your application to or renewal of your BC Farmer Identity Card. We collect this information only to set up your account, process the order, and provide you with the services you are purchasing. We do not store credit card information for later use.

3. BC AGRICULTURE WEBSITE

A visitor to the BCAC website is not required to reveal any individually identifiable information, nor is such information collected passively by electronic means. Personal information is only collected when an individual voluntarily submits his or her information. The personal information collected in this manner is subject in full to the Privacy Policy contained in this document.

If you do nothing during your visit but browse through the website, read pages, or download information, we will neither gather nor store any personal information about you. Our web server collects statistical data about visitor information used only in aggregate. This tracking system does not record personal information about individuals or link this information to any personal data collected.

4. USE OF INFORMATION

The BCAC commits to you that individual information will be used to establish and maintain responsible relationships with you, and to provide you with products, services and support. Your personal information will be used to provide you with the specific transaction that you applied for or services requested in the application you submitted.

5. CONSENT BY INDIVIDUALS

The information you provide to the BCAC such as your name, address, etc, allows the BCAC to inform you about events and activities, and to notify you of issues, events or special offers which may be of interest to you. By requesting information, you are giving the BCAC permission to contact you by way of the information you provide. If you wish to be removed from the BCAC’s communications, you can opt out at any time through the opt-out mechanism provided in such communications or by emailing us through our contact page.

6. DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

The BCAC may share aggregate information about its customers – not individual data – with current and/or potential sponsors and partners, and other parties to help them better understand the BCAC. Such aggregate information is used to give the BCAC demographic data about its customers.

7. SECURITY OF INFORMATION

The BCAC endeavours to maintain appropriate safeguards and adequate physical, procedural and technical security with respect to our offices and information storage facilities so as to prevent any unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use, or modification of personal information. Safeguards include securing physical documents and technological measures by way of secure access and encryption. BCAC employees are authorized to access personal information based only on their need to deal with the information for the reason(s) for which it was obtained. Safeguards are in place to ensure that the information is not disclosed or shared more widely than is necessary to achieve the purpose for which it was gathered. We also take measures to ensure the integrity of this information is maintained and to prevent its loss or destruction.

To ensure the integrity and privacy of the personal and credit card information you pass to us via the Internet when you make an online transaction, the BCAC has obtained a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Server Certificate, the industry standard with the strongest level of 128-bit encryption. All information collected within a secure page is encrypted while being transmitted to the BCAC’s secure server. The BCAC server is configured according to industry best practices. All critical vendor-issued security updates are applied as soon as possible following their release.

8. CONNECTING WITH US

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or about BCAC’s information handling practices, please contact us.